On another day with my friend from the UK, Mr. Mike we blasted out to some near shore gas wells off of Fort Morgan, AL. We spent the previous day searching in vain for migrating cobia…with no luck at all. Never saw the first one. At least we were not the only ones. Word one the radio was about the same. That day was picture perfect. Very calm, clear water, light offshore breeze so I guess you could call it too perfect. Fishermen always have an excuse, right? Anyway, that was the day before. On this day we ran the 18 miles on very calm water to rigs. I haven’t made that run in my flats boat in over two years but Mike was wanting a big pull that only offshore species can produce. We had success immediately! The red snapper cooperated right off and Mike landed several on strip retrieves and dead drifts on his 12 weight fly rod. He also struggled to control several more that simply would not stop heading for the bottom until breaking off his leader. I t was great fun to be down there again and we basically had it all to ourselves. When we least expected it four cobia did what they do best and swam right up under the boat and refused to eat a fly. One would have tipped the scales at probably 40lbs (US). They popped back up one more time for a few seconds and then disappeared again.
Time flew by and after lunch we headed back stopping by one last time at a single gas pipe and caught a little cobia, 10lbs on the Boga-Grip. Mike’s first cobia, although awfully small. We were happy to catch him…and let him go! Chalk up another beautiful day on our Gulf of Mexico. We are so lucky to live here!
Mike catching Red Snapper on his fly rod
Administrator, April 26th 2011 |
Tags: Alabama Fishing, Florida, Gulf Coast fishing, Gulf Coast Guides, Gulf of Mexico, Sight casting, Southern Oceans, Southern Waters, Sportfishing
Posted in Gulf Coast fishing, Uncategorized
Our old friend Mike from the U.K. paid us a visit last week for a bit of fly fishing. He hasn’t been here since 2004 and it was great to see and fish with him again. We started out a week of fly fishing last Monday the 11th. Capt. Clif was kind enough to let us try out his his new East Cape Skiff for some super skinny water fishing. We got into some nice redfish right away and proceeded to break off the first to reds we hooked. Now normally a guide would suspect knot failure if tied by the angler but that was not the case this time…and I’ll take the blame. I let Mike fish with his own leader which was already on his rod. The problem was just days before he came to fish with us he was in Mexico bone fishing with…you guessed it the same rod and leader. Yep, the prudent guide would have insisted on a new leader, but no.. lazy me said “it looks good to me Mike”. Well we managed to catch the next one (no surprise) with a new leader. We saw many more reds that day but between refusals to eat the fly, botched casts or bad boat position (my fault) we managed to end the day with only the one red to the boat.
Check back tomorrow for more on our week of fishing, story telling and Malbec drinking. Plus Mike’s take on the drink called Crown and Seven!
Administrator, April 22nd 2011 |
Tags: Alabama Fishing, Florida, Gulf Coast fishing, Gulf Coast Guides, Gulf of Mexico, Redfish, Sight casting, Southern Waters, Sportfishing
Posted in Gulf Coast fishing
